


Couldn't Wash the Echoes Out

by ShastaFirecracker



Series: Florence 'verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Domestic Fluff, Humor, Law Student Sam, M/M, Mechanic Dean, Teacher Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 02:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3101705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel had really intended to tell Dean and his ex-wife about each other before this kind of comedy of errors bullshit happened. aka Dean Meets The Family, It Must Be Serious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Couldn't Wash the Echoes Out

 

_“I run to the river and dive straight in_  
Pray that the water will drown out the din  
But as the water fills my mouth it couldn't wash the echoes out” 

 

October 10

 

“I have a problem,” Cas murmurs into Dean's shoulder.

“Mm,” Dean replies sleepily from somewhere above his head.

“I have no idea when would be an appropriate time to tell you that I have an ex-wife and an eight-year-old daughter.”

The slow, steady rise and fall of the chest under his head doesn't change. The bedroom is dim, still, but with the pink-gray threat of dawn curling fingers of dusty light around the edges of the blinds.

“Mm,” Dean says again.

After a moment, Cas says, “Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Mmyeah. Now works. Or, you know. Whenever you want.”

Cas lies there, cheek and mouth and side of his nose pressed into Dean's warm skin, resisting the pull of morning and thinking, as he always does, too much.

“Maybe not in bed, then,” he mumbles.

Dean chuckles and Cas feels the reverb all the way into his own lungs.

Cas closes his eyes against the reddening light. Maybe it isn't an opportune moment, but then, no moment has been, yet. Cas has had no thought beyond the continuous struggle to accept that _this is happening_. It's still happening. He keeps waking up and finding that he has not hallucinated Dean, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

\---

It's been almost a month and Cas still feels like he has no idea what he's doing. Whatever it is, he likes it – likes the sex, likes the laughter, likes hearing Dean's voice over auto shop racket when he calls – but he's equally terrified of it, the addictive haze of that relief he feels when Dean answers the phone, the exhausting, constant up-and-down of his own anxiety, the ease with which he's so quickly become so entangled with someone else. And he's afraid of how easy it would be to tangle further, how within reach it is, how unresistant circumstances are. It is, to be cliche, too good to be true.

The part of him that resists is the fifteen-year-old boy inside him, who looked at a mousy blonde girl with stars in his eyes when she gave him an old, used omnibus edition of Lord of the Rings for his birthday (in secret, away from the family celebration where she'd given him a sedate pair of cross cufflinks) and had moved heaven and earth to force himself to believe that what he felt was love.

Well, it had been love, of a different kind. And it still was. But he's spent twenty years of his life dealing with the fallout of the first and last time he let himself get too close to someone, and he doesn't need a psychiatrist to tell him what his problem is now.

They've flirted with closeness, him and Dean. Cas has taken Dean to the hole-in-the-wall Mexican place near the college where he's been a semi-regular for his five years of teaching there, and for some reason introducing Dean to their pozole (the food of the gods) felt as intimate as working himself up to ask for things he wanted in bed.

He hadn't anticipated how hard his heart would pound when they took a small two-seat table by the window, how at a loss for words he'd be, how overwhelmed he would feel to realize – as he had never realized before – that he has never taken anyone else to this place, he has never told anyone about this place, he has never even idly mentioned it. He doesn't make a lot of small talk so it's simply never come up, but... he'd realized, sitting there with Dean, that he hadn't ever _wanted_ to share this before. It hadn't ever occurred to him how private he was about so many small things that bring him joy. The realization that he wanted Dean to know some of those things was almost too much.

The way Dean moaned over the pozole didn't help at all. Cas almost hadn't tasted his.

A week after that, Dean had taken Cas to the Roadhouse for dinner. It was the first time Cas had been back there since the night of Gabriel's so-called bachelor party, and he hadn't thought much of it at the time. He still didn't think much of it when Dean asked if he wanted to go again. He'd noticed that Dean seemed uncertain about the asking, but he'd thought it was because Dean knew he didn't smoke, and the Roadhouse didn't enforce any non-smoking rules. He'd thought – well, he didn't know what he'd thought. That Dean was making less of an effort, inviting Cas to somewhere Dean went all the time, to somewhere Dean worked. That that meant it was supposed to be a casual date, so casual as to almost not count as a date.

When they'd gotten there, he'd realized how ass-backwards he had it. Dean was taking him somewhere he was intimately familiar with, somewhere where they'd be surrounded by people Dean knew. Dean was on edge as soon as they'd walked in and Cas had had a sudden epiphany – a pozole epiphany – when Dean had said that Andy the line cook made the best cheeseburgers in town. Dean was sharing his comfort foods, his favorite places, the small intimacies of his life. Oh. _Oh._

So Cas had told Dean to get two of his usual, and Dean had grinned and relaxed into the rest of the evening.

As they were leaving they'd been approached by an older woman whose hard look made Cas think with an inward shudder of his aunt Hester – but as she'd gotten close to them and looked at Dean, her expression had softened in a way that eliminated any resemblance to his aunt. Hester had never looked so fondly exasperated at anyone in her life.

She'd punched Dean in the arm and said, “You got somethin' to say to me, boy?”

Dean had looked flustered and said, “Thought it was your night off, Ellen.”

“Admitting to avoiding me now?”

“No, I just,” Dean huffed. Helplessly he made introductions. “Ellen Harvelle, Cas Novak.”

“Harvelle's Roadhouse?” Cas had asked, recalling the small print name over the larger neon outside.

“That's the one,” Ellen had said, sticking out her hand. Her grip was hard, testing.

Dean had made their excuses and hurried Cas out without much more interaction.

Later, while Cas had idly walked his fingers over the marks he'd left on Dean's back, Dean had murmured, “Ellen's my boss. It wasn't that I didn't want you to meet her, it's just. Dunno.”

“It's all right,” Cas had said.

After a minute, Dean had added, “Ellen was kinda like a mom to me 'n Sam for a while.”

Cas furrowed his brow, staring intently at Dean's shoulders. “Does she have a daughter named Joanna Beth?”

Dean had started so hard he almost elbowed Cas in the ribs, and flipped over. “How the hell?”

Cas had half-shrugged. “She's in my forensics class.”

“Is there anyone you _don't_ teach?” Dean had demanded, and it had all devolved quickly into laughter and good-natured argument and then hands and then mouths.

But Cas hadn't forgotten the murmured confession, had spent many of the nights afterwards when he was alone in his own bed thinking about how he'd met Dean's mother-figure, about how much it meant that Dean had risked that interaction just to take him to the Roadhouse to share a favorite meal. How should he feel about the fact that Dean had tried to avoid the meeting in the first place? How should he feel about the fact that Dean had told him what Ellen meant to him, even after he didn't have to?

\---

Neither of them likes getting up in the morning, but Castiel is far more willing to.

On that very first night, when they'd lain sated and naked and still very drunk in the darkness of Dean's room, Cas had swelled awake with sudden panic and tried to get up but Dean had held him close with a heavy tangle of limbs and slurred endearments. And Cas had calmed under words and touch, and he'd stayed and slept, and it had made all the difference to everything that came after. So ever since, it's gone unspoken: they spend the night together. There's no thought of leaving in the night. The only thing either of them has said about it was when Dean complained about getting up to take a post-sex shower because he didn't like anything that wasted valuable sleeping time.

Dean loves sleep, Cas has found. He loves being in bed, being boneless and relaxed, and he loves falling asleep and he loves staying right where he is when he wakes up, blinking slow against the morning.

It's become a tradition, now, if three and a half weeks and a half dozen “real” dates can count as tradition, that Cas is the one who gets up in the morning. It's not that he's eager to leave the warm bed for the ever-cooler autumn dawns, but he can't laze like Dean can; he gets restless. So he makes coffee, no longer intimidated by Dean's apartment's kitchen. He takes his mug of coffee back to Dean's bed and gets out his tablet and checks the internet while Dean noses at his hip and makes grumpy noises. He coaxes Cas into coffee-flavored kisses, and eventually he always asks “'dyou bring me any?” and Cas tells him that he isn't room service and to go get his own.

It's always been Dean's bed, Dean's apartment, Dean's coffee. At first it wasn't conscious – Sam had gone to spend a couple of days at his friend's off-campus house again, which Dean assurred Cas was common and not because of him, so they'd gone back to Dean's because it was familiar. The scene of the first crime, if you will. And as Sam and Cas had grown more comfortable around each other during classes and whenever they pass each other on campus, Sam had lost any problems he'd had with his brother dating his professor. If anything, he lights up when he sees an opportunity to pick Cas' brain about ancient law, and Cas falls into any academic conversation with something embarrassingly like gratitude. His sexuality isn't the only thing he spent an enormous part of his life sublimating to the will of the church. Knowledge, language, the complexity and chaos of human behavior, the explosive power of human thought and consciousness... the hungers that drew him into anthropology in the first place... he can't get enough of talking about them and he probably never will.

\---

The morning he tells Dean about his wife and daughter, it's in his own bed.

They haven't talked about what this means, that Cas invited Dean to his apartment for the first time last night. Ostensibly it was a practical call, only a logistics issue and nothing more: Sam was having a big cram session with a group of other pre-law students at his and Dean's place, but there was no reason to change date plans when there was a perfectly private home available elsewhere, right? Cas had presented it that way, at least.

But his heart had been crawling up his esophagus even as he'd said it, and although Dean had accepted the invitation in stride Cas knew that the same question, the same tension, was in the front of both of their minds.

He hadn't shown Dean around last night, just led him to the bedroom. It had been late already, then. After midnight. They did these late nights on Sundays and Thursdays now, when they could, and Cas was already adapting to finding different times to get the work done he would normally do on Monday and Friday mornings. He is already carving out a space for Dean in his life. Sometimes the fear of what he's doing with this man hits him like a hammer to the gut and he has to curl in on himself somewhere dark and cool and remember how to breathe.

Something like that same fear starts to ooze over his skin a few minutes after he makes his confession, and it's what drives him to get up.

He makes coffee as usual, but this time it's his kitchen and his coffee and that's strange. He feels less like an intruder and more like he's catering to a guest. This time he pulls two mugs out of the cabinet and wonders if he should take coffee to Dean. A certain level of sarcastic animosity is comfortable for both of them as a means of conveying endearment, but Cas always wonders where the boundaries are.

His quandary is resolved by padding feet, hands around his waist and a forehead thudding into the back of his neck.

“It moves,” he says dryly.

Dean grunts and presses closer to Cas' back, lifting his head to put it on Cas' shoulder.

“Does it speak?”

Dean makes a loud, unintelligible rumbling noise right next to his ear. Cas jerks to the side and Dean snorts, a clear _mission accomplished._

“Wookiee,” Cas mutters.

“Hi,” Dean says, raspy-low but trying for sweet. “Nice place you got here.”

Cas glances sidelong. “Your eyes are closed,” he points out.

Dean smiles faintly and stays where he is.

\---

Cas is typing a mile a minute, trying to get caught up on his email before he heads out to the school, when Dean's voice brings him up short.

“Hey Cas,” Dean calls from down the hall, muffled as if his mouth is full. “'Sthere somethin' you wanna tell me?”

“What?” Cas is honestly bewildered.

Dean emerges from the hall doorway with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and snaps open a wide, brightly colored My Little Pony towel in front of himself. Around the toothbrush, he says, “Because I'm startin'a suspect you have an ex-wife and an eight-year-old daughter.”

Cas bursts out laughing.

Dean tosses the towel over his arm and takes the toothbrush out of his mouth. “So whass her name?” he asks, still garbled around the mouthful of foam.

Cas schools his face into calm consideration. “I believe that one is Twilight Sparkle,” he says.

Dean rolls his eyes. “You shit,” he says, sticks the toothbrush back in his mouth and vanishes down the hall again.

A few minutes later he's back, swinging a chair around next to Cas to straddle it backwards and lean over to spy on Cas' screen.

“Twilight Sparkle was bequeathed to me because she is, and I quote, 'the nerd pony,'” Cas says, pausing mid-sentence in his typing.

“You say 'bequeathed',” Dean murmurs, shaking his head.

Cas gives him an unimpressed glare. “I believe Rainbow Dash is back at the old house. Claire's favorite colors are blue and purple, you see.”

“Ahah,” says Dean. “Well, my next avenue of attack was the door down the hall with the big pastel polka dot “C. N.” sign and all the pictures of cats, 'cause I didn't _think_ it was yours.”

Cas cracks a smile. “Claire has a room here,” he says. “It isn't quite an even split, time-wise, but Claire stays with me as much as our schedules permit.”

“That's great,” says Dean.

Then silence, and as it ticks by it becomes more uncomfortable as they both realize things that are going unsaid and wondering if or when they need to be verbalized. Cas finishes his last email and clicks it away. It's nine and he needs to get going soon, and so does Dean. He slowly pushes his laptop closed until its screen isn't a barrier between them.

Cas looks at Dean, who's looking into the middle distance in the general direction of the fridge. After a moment, Cas says, “I'm not even remotely straight.”

Dean's eyes focus and track back to Cas. He flashes a grin. “Well, I'm not even remotely a woman, so I guess that works out.”

Cas rolls his eyes skyward and gives Dean a little head-shake. “Questions? Curiosity? How did this man who likes dick so much come to have a reproductive relationship with a woman? Yes, no?”

Dean shifts his arms to wedge one elbow against the table and rest his chin in his hand. He sighs out a deep breath. “I dunno, man, shit happens. Life happens. I wouldn't ask something you didn't want to tell me.”

Something goes out of Cas' shoulders, a tension he didn't even realize was there. He sits forward in his chair, folding his arms on the table and mirroring Dean's position by resting his chin on his fist. He looks at Dean until Dean meets his eyes. “Amelia,” says Cas. “We got married right out of high school. The divorce was as friendly as a divorce can be. Finalized a year ago.”

Dean nods absently. His eyes drift to the side again. “I'm glad you get to be a dad, still,” he says.  
Cas frowns slightly at his tone: wistful, rueful, not exactly what Cas had expected.

“There's a kid,” Dean says finally, “who might be mine. I dunno. There was a woman I was with for two years, Lisa, and she has a son. Didn't find out she was pregnant until after we broke up, but the timing could work. But it'd work a couple other ways, too, and she hasn't gone for any tests and she doesn't want to. Which is fine, you know, it's her kid and it's her say. She wants to raise him her way. And we're still friends. I've babysat for her and I wanna throw around a baseball with that kid when he gets big enough, I wanna be there for him, for both of them, because she's a great person and a great mom and she deserves it. But I don't know if I want Ben to be mine or not. Most of the time I'm glad I don't know.”

“Most of the time,” Cas murmurs.

Dean grimaces at him.

“Amelia and I grew up in the same church,” says Cas. “Very insular, very strict. Getting married was a way out.” It isn't nearly the whole story, barely scratches the surface, but he wants Dean to know at least this much.

“And I bet they were Leviticus all the way, huh?”

“Hm.” Cas watches Dean. He doesn't seem at all perturbed. “Very much Old Testament hellfire and wrath.”

Dean just smiles at him, a slow breaking grin like a sunrise, showing teeth and wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “And here you are,” he says.

It's all Cas can do to smile back like he isn't breaking a little bit inside.

\---

Cas is staring at his phone. It's been fifteen minutes. He's opened his email five different times, as if something new will have come in in the last two minutes to give him a distraction. He lets the phone sit on the contacts list for so long it blinks off – over, over, over again.

Calling Amelia to ask to meet her – just her, without Claire – maybe over coffee. It shouldn't be so hard. He plays it out in his head. He knows Ames' voice too well and doesn't even need to call her to know how well this would go. “I need to tell you something but I'd rather not do it over the phone.” “Are you dying?” “No, but it would feel rude.” “Is it big news?” “No. I don't know.” “Now you have to tell me.” “I was only calling to ask for a time to meet.” “I'm not waiting 'til a coffee break now, you better tell me or I'll drive over there and pull you out of class.”

So the options are then: wait until the next time he sees her, which is no option at all because he doesn't want to tell her over Claire's head, or just tell her over the phone. He doesn't want to do that to her; she'd told him about Roger in person. He could go over there after school today, to the old house, but that feels over-dramatic, and again, there would be the “are you dying?” conversation.

He knows he's just making excuses, knows he should just pick one and _do_ it. Rip off the bandaid.

After class, he swears to himself. After ICA, before 334. There'll be time, between office hours and finding something to eat – there'll be plenty of time. And if there isn't time then, there'll be time after 334.

He'll find time. He'll do it. He will, he will.

\---

He loses count of how many times he loses his train of thought in ICA. It's a good class, thank God, because 100-level overview classes are a crapshoot and he's had nightmare groups before, so he does't actually lose control of the room. The students keep him on track. Sam, bless his eternal soul, speaks up unsolicited for the first time in the whole semester to bring up a point about cultural appropriation. It isn't exactly where Cas was going in the lecture, but it jars him back into the presence of mind to steer the conversation back to the outline in his head.

At 1:15, he gives up and starts wrapping up with reading and assignments. He doesn't miss the curious glances passed here and there around the room, because he knows he's notorious for never letting a class out a minute early and here he is dangling fifteen whole, glorious minutes of extra freedom over their heads. _They_ probably think he's dying now.

Sam in particular is looking at him with a faint furrow in his brow. When he tells everyone to shoo, go, run, be free, Sam stays in his seat while everyone else piles out around him. Sam unfolds himself from the absurdly disproportionate desk when the room's cleared out enough to move, slings his bag up to his shoulder and meanders to the desk.

Cas busies himself gathering papers.

“Hey, um,” Sam says. “Are you okay?”

At least it isn't an immediate “are you dying?” Cas can't help rolling his eyes at nothing before he turns to Sam, stack of papers and his tablet held in one arm.

“Yes,” he says. “Just off. It doesn't matter.”

“It isn't...”

Cas goes to the door and holds it in a clear invitation for Sam to go on in front. “It really isn't anything, Sam. If I do ever want to take you up on your offer of hiding Dean's body, trust me, I'd tell you.”

Sam laughs, mollified.

“You talked,” Cas says to change the subject as Sam lopes along beside him down the hall.

“Oh,” says Sam, scratching his neck.

“Do you have a problem with speaking in public? That's going to be an impediment as a lawyer.”

Sam grins. “Nah, not really, I just... I listen, I'm a listener, it's habit. Grew up with Dean, he's a motor-mouth, and Ellen and Bobby aren't exactly quiet.”

Cas nods, understanding. He'd spent much of his own youth nearly silent. “Well, I like it when you speak up,” Cas says. “Bring up that point again when we get to the ethics section.”

They're nearly at the front of the building and the little suite of offices that includes Cas'. The suite has a large window in the wall, blinds raised, so anyone in the hall can see in to the office desk, where someone's always there to handle general phone traffic and administrative crap for the department. It's Annie again today. They turn the last corner, and Cas isn't really paying attention, focused on Sam as he is – he vaguely notices that Annie is at her desk, that there are other people in the suite, but that's normal.

It's Sam he notices first. Sam's brow snaps back into a furrow as he looks into the window. They're only a few feet away and Cas' muscle memory is taking him right to the door.

“What's Dean doing here?” Sam mutters.

He almost trips over his own feet.

He sees several things at once, as if in slow motion: Annie, looking out through the window with wide eyes, eyebrows raised, trying to catch Cas' attention with a small, surreptitious hand-wave at the level of her desk. She flicks her eyes to the side several times. He sees that Dean is standing in front of his office door, hands in his jacket pockets, a smear of grease visible at one temple as if he'd wiped sweat away without checking his hands. Dean's smiling, talking. And Cas sees who he's talking to.

It's Amelia.

This is karmic payback, Cas thinks with a strange wash of calm. This is what I get.

Sam precedes him into the office suite, hiking his bag up higher on his shoulder and giving Dean a _what the hell, dude_ look. Cas follows immediately behind and comes around to Sam's side, holding an awkard distance from the other two, mouth already opening as if to say something – as if he has any idea what to say. Amelia is looking at him, brow smooth and eyes crinkled in a half-smile, at ease.

Karmic justice ramps up one further when Dean unthinkingly, unhesitatingly sidles up next to Cas, closing the awkward distance without seeming to notice it in the first place. He bumps Cas' shoulder with his and presses lips to his temple, fast, warm, dry. It's over in a blink.

“Hey babe,” Dean says, oblivious. He unslings something from his shoulder that Cas hadn't noticed was there and thrusts it out in Sam's direction. “Hey, shrimp, you want this?”

Sam's eyes widen. It's his laptop bag. “Oh, shit!” he exclaims. “Did I leave -”

“At home, yes, I'm the best brother ever,” Dean says. “Worship me at your convenience.”

Sam rolls his eyes and grabs the bag, slinging it opposite the bookbag he already has so he looks ridiculous with straps crossed over his chest like bandoliers. “Thank you,” he says graciously, somehow making even that sound like _'fuck you, Dean.'_

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grins. “Go frolic.”

Sam shakes his head and turns. “See you later, Cas,” he says, having dropped 'Dr. Novak' weeks ago, to Cas' relief.

Then he's gone and Dean's taking his hand out of his pocket to touch Cas' arm and Cas is – Cas jerks away from the touch, unthinking.

Because he's looking at Amelia again, has been watching her throughout this exchange. He should be able to read her like an open book after 25 years of knowing her, but he can't tell, he can't tell what's going on in there right now and it's killing him.

Dean's frowning. “Sorry to crash your office,” he says.

Cas tries to gather his wits enough to respond but just makes a strangled sound. At her desk, behind her computer, Annie is trying to make herself very small (while also, presumably, absorbing this telenovela drama like a sponge).

Amelia recovers first and comes to his rescue. Her eyes which had gone wide return to their familiar state of soft calculation. She quirks an eyebrow at Cas as she steps towards Dean.

“Hi,” she says, holding out her hand.

Dean looks at her as if he'd forgotten about her; looks at her hand, automatically holds out his own.

“We didn't get around to names,” she says mildly. “I'm Amelia Novak.”

For having known him so much less time, Cas is amazed at how easy Dean's face is to read. Shock is chased by something like existential horror as he clearly hits instant replay in his brain. His dirty-nailed hand twitches around Amelia's smaller, cleaner one, but he doesn't slacken his grip until she lets go and his hand falls back to his side, curling up at once.

“I, uh,” Dean says. “Oh. Hi.” He tears his eyes away from Amelia and glances at Cas with something like panic.

Cas has finally recovered enough to speak. “Ames,” he says, trying for mildly admonishing but he's sure he sounds as strained as Dean looks.

He still can't read her expression as she gestures towards his office with a little head-tilt.

Cas half-turns to Dean; can't meet his eyes. “I'm sorry, wo-”

At the same moment, Dean says, “I'll just -”

But Amelia cuts them both off. “No, stay,” she says. “I'll just be a minute. Unless you have to go?”

“No, I'm,” Dean says, “lunch. Break. Hour.”

Helplessly, Cas follows Amelia into his office, leaving a shell-shocked Dean alone in with Annie, whose eyes are shining like she hasn't seen anything this good on TV in years.

Ames doesn't shut the door all the way, just pushes it to. “Hi,” she says, turning to face him.

“This is some cosmic revenge,” he says, “for procrastinating about calling you.”

Then her face breaks into a smile and relief punches through Cas with gale force. “You need to watch that one, I think he was flirting with me.”

“It's just that his charm is always on full blast. He doesn't know how to turn it off. It's a condition.”

“I bet.” She shuffles her feet against the threadbare carpet. “So you were gonna tell me.”

“It hasn't even been a month,” Cas says, words spilling out too fast, pleading, now that circumstance has forced him to talk. “And I don't even know what it is, Ames, I didn't want to come to you with some half-baked thing that might end any minute, and I didn't want to tell you over the phone, and -”

She's shaking her head. “Cas, you could tell me even if you just had a one-night stand.” There's laughter in her voice. “I actually stopped by today because I haven't heard from you in so long, not more than just checking in about Claire, and I was worried something was wrong.”

He stops. Opens his mouth, shuts it again. “Oh,” he offers, dumbly. “Nothing's wrong,” he adds, hopefully.

“He's nice,” she says, tilting her head at him in a way he knows she picked up from him, years and years ago.

“He's wonderful,” Cas says without thinking.

She moves towards the door then. “Guess I should put him out of his misery,” she says, pulling the door open.

Dean is still there, shifting his weight from side to side while he listens to Annie chat about the office and answers in terse monosyllables.

He starts when Amelia strides right up to him and says, “Name?”

“Huh?”

“Your name.”

“Dean Winchester,” he says, eyes narrowing.

“If you hurt Castiel I'll kill you,” she says, cheerful tone at odds.

He looks over her shoulder at Cas, who gives him a wan smile.

“Sam said the same thing,” Dean complains. “Why is it always me?”

Amelia beams.

They walk out of the office suite and on to the front doors, depriving Annie of her drama, the three of them side by side with Cas in the middle having a tiny, private heart attack. Amelia's asking Dean what he does, where he works, and Dean's answering with calculated ease; Cas can tell he's still uncertain. And Amelia, for all her projection of cheer, seems unsettled too. He hasn't lost touch with her so badly that he can't tell when she's repressing.

Outside on the steps, Amelia turns and pokes her finger towards Cas as if she's just remembered something, but he can tell she's been working up to it. “Oh,” she says, “I forgot to ask, can you still take Claire while I'm out of town?” Her nursing conference – he'd nearly forgotten.

And there it is, what she'd come here for and been derailed by Dean – and was still in the process of being derailed by Dean, because she doesn't need to _ask_ if Claire can stay with him, she always can, but she does need to ask if Claire can be in Cas' life at the same place and time as Dean. And Amelia doesn't have anything to go on about Dean besides Cas' word, but she's always trusted his judgment. They've never had a problem with honesty, just... circumstance.

It's Cas who isn't sure he trusts his own judgment these days.

“Of course,” he says, but it sounds like a question even to his own ears. And neither of them looks at Dean, but it's Dean who answers.

“I can get out of your hair for a while,” he says quietly.

Cas looks at him, finally. “I don't want you to.” He looks at Ames. “I don't want him to.”

She nods, glancing at her feet. She tilts her head to the side again, a little smile playing at her mouth. “You haven't met Roger,” she says, apropos of nothing, and it throws Cas. But then she adds, “What if we all have dinner sometime before I go? I don't leave 'til the twentieth.”

Cas' organs are all trying to strangle each other, which he hopes doesn't show on his face when he looks at Dean. Dean grins, and his eyes are still searching but at least his smile reaches them. “Sounds great,” he says.

Cas' mouth is too dry to form a coherent response to any of this.

“Sunday?” Amelia is asking.

“Uh, yeah, I can get the night off.” Dean rubs at the back of his neck and leaves another smudge of something tarry, whatever it is he can't ever get completely out from under his nails.

“Oh, I didn't mean for you to - when would be better?”

“No, it's...”

“Monday?” Amelia's already steamrolling on.

“My boss wants to train a new guy so yeah, that's...”

“Roger's off on Mondays and I can get out of the clinic early,” she says decisively. “Listen, Claire has soccer after school, why don't you pick her up after your last class is over and get Dean and we'll make a night of it?”

“I,” Cas rasps, and swallows. “Yes, I can do that. That sounds...”

“I don't want this to be awkward,” Amelia's already saying. Cas recognizes the excessive earnestness as a sign of her nerves running high but where he used to stop her rambling with a touch on the elbow or a whisper in her ear, now he isn't really sure what it's his place to do. “Really, just a casual afternoon, you know? Your brother could come,” she adds, this last addressed to Dean.

Dean grins again, broader and more real. "Sure," he says easily.

“Ames,” Cas says, trying to get across _calm down you're going overboard_ with his tone. 

“Okay, then, Monday, four-ish.” She hasn't taken a breath. He reaches out and touches her elbow whether it's his place to do it or not.

She stops talking and takes a quick, half-laughing breath and nods.

“We'll be there,” Cas says quietly.

She nods again and presses her lips together. Then she jerks her head away from Dean, eyes pleading.

Cas throws Dean an apologetic _stay here_ look and follows Amelia down the rest of the steps to the sidewalk by the street.

Her mouth is still a tight line, but she barely hesitates before she throws her arms around Cas' chest and pulls him into a crushing hug.

“You don't need my permission to be happy,” she says into his ear.

His face twists up against her shoulder but he manages not to make any sound.

“I love you,” she adds, and after one more monumental squeeze she lets go.

He wants to say it back, he really does, but he can't speak. He balls his hands into fists in his pockets and watches her trot away fast, surreptitiously scrubbing one eye with her thumb.

Cas goes back to where Dean is still standing, hands in pockets, looking bemused. Cas can't meet his eyes.

“What just happened?” Dean asks, sounding amused.

Cas looks away. Everything inside him is a pretzel including his throat.

“You don't have to,” he says at length. “It's too much, you don't... I can call her...”

But hands are on his arms suddenly and he looks up out of reflex more than anything else.

“Hey,” says Dean, who's smiling. “It's cool. I wanna meet your kid.”

Cas can't say anything to that. At this rate, Dean is going to be the end of him. He pulls one of Dean's hands off his arm to hold it briefly instead.

Dean makes a face. “And I guess I want to meet your ex-wife's new boyfriend? Although that's getting in soap territory.”

Cas laughs, honest and sharp. “You don't have to want to meet Roger. I'm not sure if I want to meet Roger.”

“He is a strange man who hangs around your daughter all the time,” Dean points out.

“Now you're just making me want to murder Roger.”

Dean smirks. “I can help with that. There's a shovel in my trunk.”

“Maybe we should meet him first,” Cas says, grinning.

“Fine,” says Dean. “I'll be a judgmental son of a bitch if you won't.”

Cas ducks his head. “You really don't have to invite Sam,” he says. “When Ames gets nervous she gets manic.”

“Oh hell no,” says Dean. “I took that kid to too many pimply prom dates not to drag him down with me when I have to do some awkward mingling.”

“Okay,” Cas says, still feeling stupid and lightheaded and as if he isn't too far off from a pimply prom date himself. He doesn't recall feeling this much like a teenager when he actually was a teenager.

Dean spreads his hands. “Okay, Monday. Wanna do anything before then or you just want to stew in anxiety all weekend?”

“I was actually thinking of seeing the new Marvel movie.”

“Dude, that's been out for months, you haven't seen it yet?”

Cas shrugs. “I don't get to many movies. Claire's a big fan of the green girl, apparently, and I try to keep up with her obsessions.”

Dean shakes his head with a look like _you are impossible._ “Did you even see Avengers?”

Of course Cas did, but because it will make Dean have an aneurysm he furrows his brow and says “Is that the one with the robots riding dinosaurs?”

Dean makes a sound of pure anguish. Cas laughs at him shamelessly.

“You're a terrible person,” Dean declares, “and I am going to make out with you _so hard_ in an empty theater tomorrow.”

“First, why will the theater be empty,” Cas deadpans, “and second, who said you were invited?”

“What part of been out for months did you not hear?” Dean gripes. “Everybody and their grandma's already seen it. It's just freaks of nature like you who live under rocks...”

“Now you're definitely not invited,” Cas interrupts.

Dean sidles up close and leans in. “Really?” he murmurs into Cas' ear. “Whole big, empty theater to ourselves, big explosions and space battles drowning out any sound you make?”

Cas doesn't let the effect Dean has on him show on his face. “You're a terrible person,” he says, pitching his voice to match Dean's and echoing his words back at him, “and who says I'll be the one making any noise?”

\---

They don't have the theater to themselves, as it transpires. There's a loud, rowdy group of teenagers who crowd the front row, and a couple of middle-aged women laughing and chatting with each other in the middle.

The theater has stadium seating and Dean leads Cas almost to the very top of the stairs before he turns into a row and yanks Cas down into a seat. Dean proceeds to, as he declares it, “give the projectionist a show” while Cas tries not to laugh. “That's not the sound you're supposed to be making,” Dean mutters, mouthing at his ear.

Cas spends half the movie snickering and trying to move Dean's head either down or to one side so he can see the screen. “You'e like a cat who wants attention,” he complains quietly, hands shoved down in Dean's hair while Dean muffles laughter into his collar.

Eventually Dean gets distracted by special effects and ends up actually watching the movie. Cas sees a fair amount of the green girl and tries to discern exactly what Claire finds appealing about her. “It's cause she kicks ass,” Dean murmurs when he poses this question in a whisper. “You don't need any more depth than snark and ass-kicking to be a cool character.”

Cas would beg to differ but now isn't the time for that dissertation. Besides, the green girl has an interesting relationship with her sister, so he latches onto that.

When they get out of the theater it's dark and too overcast for stars. Cas didn't think to bring his coat because day had been so warm, but the lack of humidity here means that night brings cold down fast. Dean wraps an arm around his waist just as they pass the two middle-aged women from their theater in the parking lot - the women give them a look that makes Cas think they probably glanced behind them at some point and got an eyeful. He flushes hot, glad for the cover of night, but the women don't look scandalized - one of them catches his eyes for an accidental split second and beams at him, a silent apology for ogling, then turns back to her companion.

Dean didn't notice any of this transpire. He pulls Cas closer and murmurs "your place?" into Cas' ear. 

Cas manages not to worry about Monday all weekend.

\---

October 13

 

At noon on Monday the story is different.

He keeps running through his plans for the rest of the day at the expense of more immediate concerns – Annie brings him the contents of his inbox again, reminds him of a lunch meeting with the dean of the department he'd utterly forgotten about, and yells through the wall at him when it's two minutes til his next class and he hasn't emerged from the office yet. It's just that his head is somewhere else entirely, thinking about Claire and trying to figure out what he's going to say to her and not being able to formulate even a single sentence.

When he gets back from his second lecture of the day he has five missed calls on his phone. He calls Amelia back instantly, nosediving into imagined disasters, mouth going dry.

“I forgot you were in class,” she says in lieu of a greeting. “Does Dean drink?”

Cas mouths for a second. “What?”

“I'm at the store.” She sounds harried and he can hear her walking. “I was going to call you before I went to the store but you – anyway, does Dean drink?”

“Wine?” He pronounces it _vine._

“Wiseass.”

“Yes,” he says. “Dean is a lager-swilling caveman.”

“Good, so's Roger.” He hears glass clinking on the other end. “Sierra Nevada?”

“Did you hear 'caveman'?”

“Yes, but you're a beer snob. That could mean anything.”

“It means if it tastes like hops, I don't think he'll notice or care.”

She snorts. “Good to know you're already so in tune with his tastes,” she says. Makes a considering noise. Then more clinking.

“Is your plan to just get us all drunk tonight?” Cas asks, amused.

“On beer? No.” She pauses. “Should I get a red?”

“Ames,” he says calmly, “do not buy wine. This is not a wine thing. If this becomes a wine thing, we're all doomed.”

“Fine,” she huffs, and he can hear the squeaky cart start going again. “You're not the boss of me anymore.”

“I never was.”

She laughs.

“I need to check out,” she says after a beat. “Listen, I'm ordering pizza because I know better than to invite a bunch of testosterone into my house and then pit it all against each other over who gets to grill. So, supreme? Does Dean like anything weird like pineapple, or do you know?”

Cas assures her that Dean would sooner set fire to a pizza with pineapple on it than eat it. After a moment's consideration, he adds that Sam does appear to eat more vegetables than Dean does, so a veggie wouldn't be out of the question. They hash out toppings for a minute until Amelia's satisfied she isn't going to cause anyone to walk out in disgust or die of a sudden allergic reaction.

“Calm down,” Cas says mildly.

“This is going to be fine,” she says, sounding not-fine. “Isn't it?”

“It's going to be fine,” he says.

When he hangs up he's struck with the strangest feeling that he may be the least nervous person he knows right now. That is a hell's-frozen-over sort of occurrence, it's so rare.

This feeling is confirmed about an hour later when he gets a text from Dean with an attached photo. _Is this ok to wear?_ And the picture is Dean from the neck down in a mirror, wearing jeans without holes and a slightly nicer button-down than his usual (in that it doesn't have any visible motor oil stains).

Cas rolls his eyes at his empty office. Everyone but him needs to stop being utterly ridiculous. _I sincerely thought that was going to be a picture of you naked,_ he texts back.

When his phone buzzes again ten minutes later he really should have known better than to open the attached photo. But he does keep it. For science.

\---

After the third time he comes back in to ask Annie to make a note of another thing he forgot, she dutifully writes the note, then gets up and walks with him all the way to the parking lot and waits by his car while he reluctantly digs out his keys.

“Whatever you're avoiding, you can avoid it somewhere else,” she says. “I want to go home sometime today.”

Cas gives her a forlorn look. “I have to go pick up my daughter to have dinner with my ex-wife and the men we're dating.”

She makes a face of mixed horror and hilarity and puts a hand over her mouth. “Oh no,” she says. Then, kindly, “If you need to be sick tomorrow I can back you up. Say you spent all day coughing.”

He smiles ruefully. “I'm sure that won't be necessary,” he says. “But I make no promises about not setting something on fire to create a distraction.”

“You'll make it,” she assures him.

He sighs and leaves.

It's ten minutes until the end of soccer practice when he arrives at Claire's elementary school.

It's finally cool enough for him to have brought out the old tan coat – he likes when he can wear it, frayed at the lapels as it is, despite the useless left pocket with the hole in it, because it's been with him through so much. It was one of the first thrift-store purchases he'd made completely on his own, cut off from his old life and his family and everything he'd ever known. Amelia had been scared to leave the church and their families, too, but they'd both needed out of that hell more than they'd needed the security. And it had been hard to leave, awful to be on their own, paling only in comparison to what they'd escaped. There had been a particularly rough couple of years when they were both taking classes and working until they were drive-into-a-ditch levels of exhausted 24/7. He'd desperately needed a coat, saved dollars here and there until he could hit up the Salvation Army. He'd liked that this one was too big, that it hid him from the eyes of strangers, that it made him anonymous. That it was like a blanket he could huddle in when the heat in the shitty apartment building failed.

After the winter of the coat, things got better. He wasn't superstitious, hated any belief in fate or destiny for lots of his own personal reasons, but it was hard not to attach the memory of so much good to the coat that wearing it made him feel irrationally safe. Lucky, even. There was a cold spell in April, so he happened to be wearing the coat at Ames' pinning ceremony. She'd immediately gotten work as an RN and pulled in a big enough paycheck in a few months to move them to a better place. Desperate to make her happy, he'd agreed when she said she wanted to start a family. He'd been wearing the coat when she told him she was pregnant; he'd covered her head with it to stumble to the car through the pouring rain when she was the size of a house and fit to pop.

And now when he tries to see himself through his daughter's eyes, he realizes that she's never lived in a world where he didn't own this stupid coat. To her, it's part of him, it's the essence of the image of him coming to pick her up from school in the fall and winter and cold green spring. For the entire span of her life, he has never raised his hand in violence. She's never lived in a world where he trained every day in survival and ran drills with other children in the lethal use of blades and guns and bare hands. The life where he drew first blood every time he picked up a dirk has never, ever overlapped with the life that includes Stanford and the coat and Claire.

That life feels like it happened to someone else. Someone who still stands at attention in the corner of his mind, maybe, someone who looks out through his eyes at Amelia and sees the girl she'd been back then (always in skirts, hair long and severe, looking at the ground). But it's not him anymore. He only ever wants to be the person Claire thinks he is.

He waits a few minutes in the parking lot, counting the seconds of each indrawn breath and pulling idly at stray threads in the cuffs of the coat, before he gets out of the car.

“Soccer practice” at the elementary school can only qualify as an organized sport by the loosest possible definition of the term. It's mixed sexes and grade levels, a field full of kids ages seven to nine alternately running and shrieking and kicking and falling, vaguely aware that there are some kind of rules they're supposed to be following, a ball they're supposed to be chasing. But mostly they chase each other, or bees, or stoop to grab up handfuls of grass.

Some are athletic, some aren't. The coach is an apathetic middle-aged woman who doesn't bother to direct the play, seems content to stand at the sidelines, whistle occassionally, and chew gum like she's trying to grind bones between her teeth. Cas hadn't liked her at first and had worried about leaving Claire under her supervision for an hour every day until the one time he'd seen her take care of a little boy who'd split the skin of his knee on a rock. She was perfunctory but not condescending, sharp, or unkind. She'd distracted and band-aided him with practiced ease and he'd been running again within a minute, as if he'd forgotten it ever happened. She'd gone back to mutilating her gum and stopping any disasters before they even started.

Cas had asked Claire about whether or not she liked soccer, and Claire had said that at the beginning of the year, there'd been a few bullies in the group. Because of the coach, now there weren't. Everyone looked forward to soccer. Everyone had their heirarchies and friends and allegiances and purpose. (She didn't use those words, but Cas couldn't remember all the names she threw at him like a garbled, nonlinear summary of a soap opera.)

All Cas can see when he looks in from the outside is chaos, but he supposes that there's an order to Claire's version of the world he'll never be able to see.

Claire's one of the reasonably athletic kids, running like her life depends on it, red face and fierce smile. She isn't all that competitive, but she has a drive that seems to Cas like she spends all her effort on trying to be greater and faster and more impossible than her own small skin can contain. He believes that she'll grow into it, whatever it is she needs to be. He'd believe anything of her, for her. The love he has for her is a crippling thing.

Whenever he's watching her, he doesn't worry.

The coach's whistle shrieks one last time and she yells for everyone to wrap it up. There are other parents loitering around the bleachers but Cas hasn't ever spoken to them much. Amelia does more of the networking. He doesn't like talking to other parents, feels like they could see right through him to all the terrible decisions he's made and terrible things he's done. He'd rather talk to Claire's teachers, where he feels he's properly qualified to be a little bit of a judgmental asshole. (Amelia makes him back off about common core at every open house.)

He doesn't wave for Claire; she's talking to her friends, heading towards the bottom row of bleachers where there's a jumbled pile of backpacks and some tangled jackets. Her hoodie is powder blue with rainbow stripes down the sleeves. Her knees are grass-stained. He loves her so much it's going to kill him.

Finally she waves goodbye and turns to trot to where she knows he'll be waiting, even though she hasn't looked to check before now. She just knows he'll be there, because he always has been and he always will be.

She beams when she sees him and breaks into a run across the last few yards of grass until she slams into his legs. He staggers and it isn't even all that exaggerated. She's always done the full-on ramming hugs, but in the last year she's really turned into a cannonball.

“Oof,” he grunts, leaning down for a brief hug. Her arms still don't reach all the way around his waist but she laughs into his shirt.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says, pulling away and hiking her backpack up on her shoulders.

He sticks his hands in his pockets as they walk back across the grass to the parking lot. “Good day at school?”

“Yeah,” she says, still breathless from running. “We got a group project in science and I'm with Robin and Andy...”

For five minutes she chatters, stopping only to clamber around the seat to grab a bottle of water out of the back. Cas would just as soon drink tap water but he keeps a case of bottled in the car, which he claims is in case the car breaks down but in truth Claire ends up drinking 90% of it just like this.

When she seems to have wound down to some kind of lull and they're stopped at a red light, he tilts his head a little and says, “So Mom told you I'll be home for dinner tonight, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, gulping more water. “Roger's gonna be there.”

“She told you a couple of other people are coming?”

“Yep, your friends.” She looks at him, crinkling the thin plastic of the water bottle. She's so damn open and trusting. If Amelia starting to see Roger didn't hurt her, surely this won't, either. He wishes he was as trusting as she is.

He takes a deep breath and looks straight ahead at the road. The light's green and he focuses on driving. “I'm dating someone,” he says careful. “That's who's coming over.”

She swigs more water and he risks a glance at her. She gives him a perplexed look and a kind of shrug against the seat. “Cool,” she says, like she doesn't see the relevance of this topic.

“It's just that I'd like you to meet him before you come over next week.”

The pronoun appears to go right over her head. She squirms in her seat, tugging at the seatbelt. Soccer practice leaves her energetic and high-strung. “Okay,” she says. “I want you to meet Roger, too. He's pretty cool, he told me what a shin splint was.”

Then she launches into a fumbling secondhand explanation of a shin splint and Cas just watches the traffic around him, bemused.

Fifteen minutes later he's pulling into a familiar driveway and parking next to Amelia's red Toyota. It's a small house, light blue, cookie-cutter SoCal suburb through to the core, but it's a _house._ It's the last big thing he and Ames had done together, buy a house. Married to his best friend with a house and a kid, Cas thinks to himself sometimes, and it still all fell apart. He can't make anything work. But when he's feeling hopeful he doesn't call it “falling apart.” Because it had hurt, yes, and it was the death of a kind of life Cas had fought tooth and nail to grab onto because he'd thought it would fix him, but he's happier now and closer to Claire and better friends with Amelia than he had been for several years.

It had made more sense for Cas, distance-wise, to be the one to move out to live closer to the school. It takes him ten minutes to get to work now where it used to take thirty, depending on traffic. Still, he misses this place.

There aren't any other cars here. Claire leaps out and runs into the garage to the back door, still burning energy. Cas follows at a more sedate pace.

Claire's already yelling, “Mom, I'm home!” and swinging her backpack off when he steps over the threshold into the little laundry room. He shuts the door Claire had left open and meanders into the kitchen. There's a wide, arched door space through into the open-plan living room. He goes over to lean on the frame while Claire throws her backpack on the old brown couch and dashes off to other parts of the house.

After a minute Amelia emerges from the hall door on the other side of the living room, wiping wet her hands on her pants. She spots him and throws him a hesitant, nervy smile, scrubbing palms over her jean-clad thighs.

“So,” she says. “Break it to her?”

“She was much more interested in shin splints,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah,” she says. “But I really don't think she's going to mind. I really don't.” She gives him an earnest, searching look.

He shrugs, stomach doing backflips.

There's a knock at the front door. Amelia opens it and breaks out a happy little smile for the man on the other side, whose hand is still raised.

“Hi!” Amelia says, letting him in.

Roger is a couple of inches shorter than Castiel and violently redheaded. He has a scrubby-short red beard to complement messy hair. He has gold-rimmed glasses and deep lines around his eyes – smile lines or exhaustion or both. He's also wearing green scrubs and the kinds of shoes that people only buy once their backaches far outweigh any sense of fashion or shame.

“Roger, this is, um, this is Claire's dad,” Amelia's saying, making awkward jerking gestures with her hands between them. “Cas. Castiel. Uh. And this is Roger...”

Roger comes to Cas first, hand outheld, and when he smiles a lot of those lines deepen in a way that suggests constant use. “It's really great to meet you,” he's saying, and Cas finds himself wrapped up in a two-handed handshake, grip firm and warm and dry.

Cas actually kind of resents the fact that he automatically likes Roger. He'd thought there would be more of a period of adjustment. He feels like he ought to get the chance to exercise some of the protective passive-aggressiveness he's been perfecting over the years. But if he feels anything in particular, it's just mild relief.

“You, too,” Cas is just trying to say to Roger, when Claire runs back in, having changed out of her soccer clothes but thrown her hoodie back on over her t-shirt. She scampers up to Cas and grabs his hand. “Dad, Dad, come see what I got, come with me!”

“Claire,” Amelia sighs.

Claire leans back, holding Cas' hand in both of hers, until she's almost at 45 degrees between father and floor. She's giggling.

“You'd think running flat out for an hour would make her crash,” Ames grumbles. “Okay, go show Dad what you got. Roger chipped in,” she adds to Cas, looking a little apologetic.

Roger's brows furrow too. “Hope you don't mind?”

Cas shakes his head. “I'll only mind if it's a live pony,” he says.

Roger laughs. He has an honest laugh.

Cas lets Claire drag him outside through the front door. She runs off around the side of the house as soon as he sets foot on the sidewalk; she returns seconds later on a new bicycle, struggling to propel it over grass to the concrete. It's purple and blue with rainbow streamers blowing back from the handbars.

She tips to a halt next to him, catching herself on one foot.

“Very impressive,” Cas says. Okay, so maybe he does feel a terrible pang that Claire's first non-training bike came as a gift from Roger instead of him, but that's no reason to show it. “Where will you ride it?”

“Mom says I can go around the block,” says Claire. “And there's a track at the park.”

For ten minutes or more they chat aimlessly. Claire is terribly distractable but infinitely curious. Amelia and Roger come out to sit on the front steps and watch her bike in circles around Cas.

A rumble of engine noise makes Cas turn. A familiar black car rounds the corner of the block and eases on down to park on the side of the street just behind the small pickup that must belong to Roger.

On the porch, Amelia rises to her feet but stays where she is. Claire stands up on the pedals and coasts down the sidewalk towards the street, and Cas strides after her.

Sam emerges with an awkward smile towards Cas, casting a lingering glance at Claire. “Uh, hi...”

“Hello, Sam,” says Cas. And as Dean slams his door and rounds the hood of the car, “Dean.”

“Hey!” Dean's beaming grin isn't remotely nervous. Cas doesn't know how he does that. “You've got a mini-me.”

Cas smiles down at Claire, who's at his side, propped on one foot and watching the strangers curiously. “Hi,” Claire says.

“Claire,” says Cas, gesturing, “this is Sam and his brother Dean.”

Dean reaches the sidewalk and immediately crouches so he's closer to Claire's eyeline. “Hey, kiddo, what's up?”

“The sky,” Claire says immediately. It's how Cas always answers when Claire asks him the same thing.

Dean laughs. “Sweet ride,” he says, pointing at her bike.

“Yeah,” she grins.

Dean holds out his hand, affecting solemnity. “I'm Dean,” he says. “I'm your...” He pauses, glances up at Cas, who gives him a faint nod. “I'm your dad's boyfriend. That okay with you?”

The concept finally seems to click for Claire and her grin fades a little. She doesn't look upset, though, just considering, and suddenly a little shy. She looks at Dean's outstretched hand like she doesn't know what it's for.

“Yeah,” she says finally. “Are you a teacher? Roger's a nurse like Mom.”

“Nah, I'm a mechanic,” says Dean, making no big deal of lowering his hand and propping his elbows on his knees.

“What's that?”

“I fix cars.”

She points at the Impala. “Like that car?”

“Baby? Yeah, I've fixed her tons of times.”

“Who's Baby?”

“The car, kiddo,” Dean says, unfazed by circular logic and failure to follow direct lines of thought. “Her name is Baby.”

“Why does your car have a name?”

“All the best cars have names,” Dean says very seriously. “It is very cool to name your car.”

Sam is shaking his head mournfully.

After a beat, Claire says, “Mom calls her car a pee oh ess.”

Dean throws his head back and laughs.

“Do you like superheroes?” Claire asks suddenly, leaning over the handlebars.

“Heck yes, I like superheroes,” Dean grins.

“Cool,” says Claire, and sticks out her hand.

Dean shakes it, and with that, the deal appears to be settled. Cas turns back to the porch and gives Amelia a little half-shrug. She beams at him.

\---

It isn't nearly as awkward an evening as Cas had feared. Roger comes down the steps to ooh and ahh over the Impala, which endears him immediately to Dean. (Though Dean leans over and whispers in Cas' ear, “I'm still willing to help you kill him even if he does have taste.” Cas murmurs back, “I appreciate it, but I think we'll let him live for today.”) Sam and Amelia immediately bond over mutual eye-rolling.

Sam apologizes for being a fifth wheel and Roger immediately blurts, “Oh, no way, if my sister didn't live in Arizona I'd have invited her, too.” At least the air is clear about the discomfort of the assortment of people.

Except that, after barely half an hour, there isn't any discomfort. Cas feels like perhaps the idea that this _should_ be uncomfortable is just another thing driven into him by the narrative of the world around him, rather than a thing that is actually true. Roger and Sam both loved LOST and spend their entire first beers sitting on the porch steps complaining about the ending. Dean chats with Claire about cars and space and superpowers and ponies (and anything else Claire jumps to unexpectedly). Cas stands in the front door, out of his coat at last, and listens to Ames in the kitchen behind him ordering pizza on the phone, looking out over what used to be his yard and feeling, in general, like he's having an out-of-body experience.

(“Well, you could go with something classic, like Red,” Dean's saying, weaving side to side while Claire tries to ram his legs with her front tire.

“It's gotta be a _cool_ name,” Claire says.

“Okay, who's your favorite Avenger?”

“Iron Man!”

“That's perfect, then, 'cause it's already hot-rod red.”

“I can't name Mom's car _Iron Man._ ” She sounds offended at the notion.

“Come on, you totally can.”)

Amelia walks up behind Cas and wedges herself into the open door next to him. They watch the goings-on in easy silence for a minute.

“We did good, huh?” Ames says.

Cas smiles at her.

“For the record, I couldn't have picked anyone I'd rather have a kid with.”

“Next time,” he murmurs, “artificial insemination.”

She snickers. He's glad they can finally joke about that. It's so much better for it to be funny than excruciating.

After a minute, Ames says, “Can I trade you?”

He glances down at her; she's watching Dean.

He grins, a little smug. “Not a chance.”

It's getting dim out and they migrate inside before too long. Just after Amelia passes Dean a beer and he swigs without even looking at the label (and Cas mutters “Told you” into her ear), there's another knock.

Dean happens to be closest, so he follows Amelia to the door while she digs folded bills out of her pocket.

The delivery kid is thin, gangly, acne-pocked. He says, “Hi, I have a supreme, a veg – oh, hi, Dean.”  
Cas blinks. He thinks he sees Amelia's shoulders jerk with a start, too.

“Hey, Alfie,” Dean says, taking a pull from his beer.

The kid grins. “If I'd known this was you I'd have put some extra peppers in.”

“Don't sweat it,” says Dean. “This is my secret double life. Here, I got that.” He takes the unwieldy boxes.

“Thanks - oh, it's, uh, it's 27.79,” he says, looking awkwardly between Dean and Amelia.

Amelia forks over the money while Dean carries on, “How's your mom?”

“She's, um, she's breathing a lot better since the last treatment,” he says.

“That's great.”

“Yeah, she's arguing with all the doctors again.”

“You keep her fightin',” says Dean, reaching out to shake the kid's hand.

“I will,” he says. “I uh, I got more houses, I'll see you around?”

“You know it. Take care.”

When the door's closed, it takes Dean a moment to realize that everyone in the living room is staring at him.

“What?” he demands. “Bobby's a lazy sonuv-” He stops himself. “Bobby orders in lunch at the shop a lot,” he finishes lamely, and opens the top box. “Hello, pepperoni.” And wanders off to the kitchen island with the boxes, unceremoniously cramming the first slice into his mouth.

Amelia looks with intense focus to Cas. She mouths in a silent, exaggerated plea, _trade?_

He shakes his head, grinning into his beer.

\---

“So I accidentally named your car Tony,” Dean's saying to Amelia, at the exact moment Claire falls asleep.

She's been perched in Cas' lap, asking him endless questions while they halfway watch a rerun of How It's Made on TV. Roger and Sam are still yammering on, and Cas is mildly amused that all the wrong pairs of people have accidentally made friends today. He'll really need to exchange more than three sentences with Roger sometime in the future.

It's after eight, and given the day she's had, Cas is frankly surprised Claire made it up this late. Nine is her latest bedtime and he knows for a fact that she usually fights it tooth and nail. But then, she usually doesn't go nonstop through running, biking, Extreme Grownup Interrogating and a mass of carbs and cheese for dinner, either.

Cas is on one end of the long couch with Dean and Amelia. He'd finally gotten settled with one arm over the back of the couch behind Dean's head; when Claire's last yawning question turns into a head thumping against his shoulder, he leans over further and pokes Amelia in the hair.

“Ow, what. Oh.”

Cas carefully pulls his feet off the low table in front of him, gets one arm under Claire's knees and the other around her back, and stands. Amelia makes as if to move. He shakes his head and she settles back.

Claire shifts when he's halfway down the hall and his grip nearly slips. She's going to be too big to carry before too long.

He wakes her up when he gets to her door because it's closed and he has no free hands. She sways when she's on the floor again but remains standing. He crouches. “Brush your teeth and get ready for bed, sweetheart.”

“”M not tired.”

He kisses her forehead and pushes her towards her room. She grouches but goes.

He stands, sighs and leans his forehead against the wall, closing his eyes. A moment later there are footsteps and Dean's voice saying, “Cas, you good?”

He approximates nodding without lifting his head.

“You wanna head out here in a minute?” Dean asks.

Claire emerges from her room in her pajamas, purple shorts and a baggy t-shirt with Captain America's shield on it. She blinks up at the men in the hall, squinting.

Cas kneels on the floor, ignoring his knees, and pulls her into a completely enveloping hug.

“Love you,” Claire mumbles.

Cas screws his face up and breathes normally. “You too, baby. I'll see you soon.”

“Kay. Night.”

“Good night.” He presses his mouth into her hair one more time.

She escapes the dreaded Soppy Dad Hug into the bathroom and shuts the door.

Cas pushes up to his feet and finds Dean giving him an inscrutable look. “She likes you,” Cas offers.

Dean nods, hands in his pockets. “Pretty cool kid you got there,” he says, mouth twitching.

Cas shrugs one-shouldered. “I'm thinking of keeping her.”

Dean smiles. “Let's go home.”

\---

Dean tosses the Impala's keys to Sam as they head out the door, after a great deal of goodbyeing and good-nighting and swearing to do this again. Cas lingers too long hugging Amelia but she doesn't let go until he does.

In the dark, illuminated from behind by the porch light, Sam holds up the keys with a questioning look. Dean just jerks his head towards Cas.

With that wordless communication out of the way, they head to their respective cars. Dean slides into the passenger seat by Cas. They don't talk on the way to Cas' apartment building.

The next morning, Cas lies there in the warm cocoon of blankets and skin and, still half-asleep, thinks about the fact that this is the first time he and Dean have just slept in the same bed. Nothing else happened last night. Dean has a toothbrush and spare clothes here. These feel like milestones he missed as they were happening, but he notices now. He realizes he's wanted this peace for a long while, but still felt like an excuse was needed.

He lies in bed for a long time, the restlessness that usually drives him to get up early nowhere to be found.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam timestamp #2

On October 31st, Sam knocks on the frame of Castiel's open door and leans his head in.

He doesn't think of his professor as Dr. Novak anymore, which is in some ways a blessing but in others just makes the whole thing more awkward. Sam likes his class a lot but simultaneously can't wait to get out of it. If he ever sees his teacher, any teacher, sucking face with his brother _ever again,_ it'll be too soon.

But he's intrigued by Dean's reaction so far to this thing happening with Cas, whatever it is. It involves noises Sam would like to have cauterized from his mind forever, but it also involves Dean meeting Cas' kid and doing his own laundry and _trying new foods._ That's alarming for Dean. That's downright apocalyptic.

And Sam likes Cas, a lot. He'd rather not have to do the student-professor thing, which squicks him, but without that hangup he can see himself going to Cas for advice and ideas and conversation for the rest of school, for sure.

Thing is, Sam can sabotage any person who tries to date Dean in a heartbeat simply by not warning them about any of Dean's massive and plentiful issues. And he's done it, plenty. Even nudged a few particularly nasty pieces to do something stupid that made Dean throw them to the curb. It's Sam's superpower over Dean, his veto power, and he tries not to abuse it but it _has_ made young adult life a lot more bearable since he figured out he could do it.

But he likes Cas and he likes how Dean is around Cas so he's going to stick his neck out, just this once. Just once, he promises himself.

“Dr. Novak?” he asks, knocking on the frame again.

Castiel is staring at his computer like he can melt the screen if he glares enough. “Annie has the candy,” he says distractedly, then glances up. “Oh, Sam.”

“Do you have a minute?”

Cas leans back in his desk chair, cracking his neck. “Yes,” he says. “I have had many minutes and I'm sure I'll have many more.”

“Um...”

“Writer's block,” says Cas. “Come in.” He waves vaguely at the chair opposite the desk. Sam picks his way to it through stacks of books and boxes of papers on the floor.

“Thesis?” Sam asks, looking around at the hurricane of academia.

“It's not even _my_ thesis,” Cas complains. “I could just not make the effort.”

But he is, and he will, because he wants to. Sam likes that about him, too.

“So, uh,” Sam says. “I need to warn you about Dean.”

Cas' eyes lock to his immediately. “Pardon?”

“No, nothing bad – or well, yeah bad, but.” Sam sighs. “Have you noticed him acting weird?”

“Weird?” Cas sounds guarded.

“Withdrawn,” says Sam. “Snappish.”

Cas' expression is all he needs for an answer.

“Okay, well, I just wanted you to know that it has nothing to do with you,” Sam says. Cas just barely tilts his head to the side, the same way he does when listening intently to a student answer a question in class. “Dean won't tell you this, and he's let his attitude drive people away before, so. November 2nd is the anniversary of our mom's death.”

Cas' eyes widen fractionally.

“She died in a house fire when I was a baby,” Sam says. “I don't remember any of it, but Dean was four, so. He's not, you know, he's had a lot of years to come to terms, but he's still messed up about it, when he's reminded. He carried me out of the fire,” he adds, a detail he usually leaves out when he tells other people how Mary died.

“Oh,” Cas says quietly, looking a little stunned.

“Don't tell him I told you,” Sam says, standing quickly and hiking up his bag. “I mean, don't even tell him you know. It's just, if he's an extra-enormous ass this week, that's why. It's not you.”

“Thank you,” Cas says reflexively.

“Okay,” says Sam. “Gotta meet Jess for this dumb hayride thing the Student Association is doing. See you later, Dr. Novak.”

“Happy Halloween,” Cas says. Sam detects irony in his tone.

Sam hightails it out of there before he has to deal with followup questions.

\---

On the evening of November 1st, Sam has his nose buried in one of the books Cas leant him and is pretending it's not uncomfortable for Dean to be sipping his third whiskey double and staring grimly at Ghostbusters on the TV like it's a documentary about the Holocaust.

There's a knock at the apartment door. Sam starts; he isn't expecting anyone and doesn't see why Dean would be, either.

Sam unfolds from the couch when Dean doesn't even twitch and goes to unlatch the door and check the peephole.

It's Castiel. Bemused, Sam opens the door and notices the orange plastic jack-o-lantern bucket Cas is holding.

“You're kinda late for trick-or-treating,” Sam says.

Cas holds up the bucket by way of greeting. “I require assistance with consuming this leftover sugar,” he deadpans. “It must be disposed of before Claire re-confiscates it.”

“Stealing candy from kids?” Sam grins, moving aside to let Cas in.

“We make terrible sacrifices for our children,” says Cas, but he's glancing past Sam now.

Then Sam gets it. He jerks his thumb at the sofa and mouths “two and a half sheets to the wind.”  
Cas nods, looking unperturbed, and walks directly to the couch, drops the candy bucket into Dean's lap and sits down next to him, tan overcoat and all.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.

Sam takes his time relocking the door.

“What're you doing here?” Dean grunts, sipping whiskey.

Sam looks back in time to see Cas deftly take the tumbler and drain it himself. “Existing,” says Cas. “I come bearing candy. Some of it is chocolate but some of it is described on the packaging as “chocolate-flavored” and the ingredients show no sign of cacao. And some of it is utterly unmarked, which puts me in mind of those white vans of urban legend. I haven't tried any of those.”

Sam meanders back over to the couch. If he isn't mistaken, a hint of a smile is dragging at Dean's mouth, though he looks like he's fighting it.

“Those orange and black things are disgusting,” Dean says. “The little strawberry things are pretty good, though.”

Cas reaches into the bucket and digs out an unmarked strawberry thing. “This does not combine well with the taste of whiskey,” he comments almost immediately.

Dean snorts a reluctant hint of laughter. Sam almost feels like he needs to hold his breath lest he interrupt the fragile miracle happening on the couch.

He ends up back where he started, on the far side of the sofa from Dean, just with Cas on the seat between them. He goes back to his book and doesn't join in while Cas questions the etiquette and customs of trick-or-treating and Dean eventually launches into a spiel about it.

“Sour Patch is the most valuable candy for trade,” Dean's saying. “You'd think chocolate, but there's plenty of that in lots of different kinds, and there's only the one sour gummy thing that's worth a shit. And there's Warheads, which you always gotta make one poor unsuspecting kid eat one before the night's over so you can watch the fireworks.”

Cas sifts the candy and holds up a tiny foil-wrapped thing. “I've never had one,” he says.

“No,” Dean says. Out of the corner of Sam's eye he can see that Dean's grin is unreserved now.

Cas peels it open. “For tradition, I suppose,” he says, and sticks it in his mouth.

Ten seconds later he nearly comes off the sofa. Dean is howling with laughter while Cas sits forward and makes strangled noises around the most hilariously constipated face Sam's ever seen. Even Sam can't help joining in the laughter.

Dean leans forward with Cas and puts a hand on his back. “Y'okay?” he wheezes.

Cas cracks open teary eyes and says, “I hate you, my _jaw_ hurts.”

Dean dissolves again.

Eventually Cas recovers, Sam fetches three beers per Dean's request (at least it's better than the hard stuff, Sam decides), and Dean rewinds Ghostbusters to the beginning when Cas asks an idle question that reveals that he hasn't seen it.

“Lose the flasher coat,” says Dean. “Come on, don't be weird.”

Which is a rich thing to say, Sam thinks, but ten minutes later Cas is in only jeans, shirt and sweater vest, matching Dean's pose with his socked feet on the coffee table.

This time through, Dean laughs at the movie. Sam looks now and then at Cas, who is watching Dean as much as the television.

Sam's gonna have a lot to mull over about these two.

\---

The next day, Sam's phone rings while he's at lunch.

“Hel-”

“Is your brother _possessed?_ ”

It's Bobby. Sam says, “Uhhh.”

“He just showed up at the yard,” says Bobby. “You know I don't schedule him on the second.”

“He who what now?”

“He came in, said 'Don't talk to me' and now he's out back wreckin' whatever junkers he can set a crowbar to. I mean, I needed them parts, but damn.”

“Yeah, he, uh,” Sam says, “didn't get as wasted as usual last night, I guess.”

“Don't tell me he's finally therapized himself healthy in the head.”

“From the car-smashing, I'd say no,” says Sam. “But he's doing better this year, yeah.”

There's a beat of silence. “So who's the dame?”

“Huh?”

“I've seen him make google-eyes at text messages and I know they ain't from you.”

“Oh,” says Sam. “Uh.” Bobby knows Dean's bi, that's not the problem, it's just that Sam didn't know Dean hadn't told him about Cas yet. Guilt pangs at Sam just a smidge, because it's not really his place to out Dean, but Bobby'll come right over and box his ears up and down the street if he refuses to answer the question now. Dean'll respect that. “The 'dame' is, um, one of my professors. Dr. Novak.”

“She's that good for him, huh?”

“ _Mr._ Novak,” says Sam.

“Ah. He's that good for him, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “I think he is.”

“Good. Now when'm I gonna get to meet him so I can stick a shotgun in his face and ask about his intentions?”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first part of this 'verse in October '14, but since it showed no signs of stopping, I went ahead and counted this part and everything that comes after as my NaNoWriMo novel - and it was the very first year I legit won! *high fives self*


End file.
